vegan treat – meg.antinucci

A few months back I had no idea that these tiny treats even existed, and now I eat them all the time! I randomly stumbled upon them at our local BJ’s wholesale club and figured I would give them a try because they are raw and contain just two ingredients, dates and almonds. Seriously these things are like miniature candy bars they are sweet but have that crunch from the almonds and are kind of gooey in the middle. I will eat them mostly by themselves as a little snack two is a serving size and do have a decent amount of calories considering how tiny they are but they are packed with flavor, vitamins, and nutrients.

I just saw an episode of Giada at Home on the Food Network and she made a Banana Walnut Smoothie that looked really good with almond milk, walnuts, and a few other ingredients. I decided to put my own spin on in and use these little date rolls in place of the walnuts that hers called for.

Recipe

1c Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk

1 Banana

1 Almond Date Roll

3/4c Frozen Mango

3/4c Frozen Pineapple

Total Calories: 296 for entire recipe which is great for breakfast or for a snack you could split the recipe into two servings at 148 calories per serving of course this will vary depending on the brands and size of banana.

I definitely noticed a difference with the dates, they added just a little bit of extra sweetness and combined with the banana gave a perfect creamy texture that was delicious! I will be making this over and over again this summer it’s so good!

xo Meg

March 25, 2014March 25, 2014 by bellanoochi

So these are a variation of my banana muffin, but I changed a couple of the ingredients to use up some blueberries that I had left over from this week. They tasted great and have slightly fewer calories than the banana muffins.

The main ingredient that I substituted was oat flour for the regular flour. I felt like it had more nutritional properties than regular white flour and I wanted to see how it would hold up in baking. Oat flour is literally just finely ground oats personally I think that it is a coarser texture than regular flour but I didn’t notice it at all when the muffins were done. Some benefits of oats/oat flour are, good sources of vitamins, minerals, protein, helps stabilize blood sugar, good source of fiber, and heart healthy.

I also substituted the walnuts for pecans but you can use almonds or completely skip the nuts all together if you don’t like them.

These are a perfect grab and go breakfast especially since they have heart healthy whole grains they will keep you full for a couple of hours and are a nice change to your standard bowl of oatmeal.

Recipe

1.5c Unsweetened Sugar Free Vanilla Almond Milk

2t Apple Cider Vinegar

2 & 2/3c Oat Flour

1/4c Coconut Flour

1.5t Baking Powder

1/2t Baking Soda

3/4t Salt

2t Ground Cinnamon (or to taste)

1/3c Unsweetened Apple Sauce

5T Truvia Baking Blend

1t Vanilla Extract

1.5c Fresh Blueberries

1 Ripe Bananas

Crumb Topping

1t Cinnamon (or to taste)

1/4c Chopped Pecans

1T Splenda Brown Sugar

Calories– 104 Per Muffin (Batter makes aprx. 18 muffins)

*Preheat oven to 325 degrees F, in a small bowl mix together the almond milk and vinegar and let sit for a couple of minutes until you start to see the texture change. Next Combine all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Mash up the banana and then combine all of the wet ingredients and stir well. Next step is to combine all of the wet with the dry and stir until well combined. Fold in the blueberries and then scoop into a bread loaf pan or muffin tins and then start your crumb topping. In a small bowl combine your cinnamon, brown sugar, and crushed pecans. Stir mixture together and top each muffin with desired amount. Pop them into the oven for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Since the texture of the oat flour is coarser I would recommend sifting the flour or using a whisk to make sure that you get most of the lumps out before adding the wet ingredients. I think that these turned out great with the blueberries and I loved how they tasted with the oat and coconut flour combination. I will deff be using oat flour for the rest of my baking I ordered mine off of amazon and it came in a pack of four but I am sure that you could find it in your local grocery store with the rest of the Bob’s Redmill products!